Sun Reductions Will Hit Open Source Efforts

In late November, many thousands of Sun Microsystems employees got the word that effective January 4, their services will no longer be required. While the cuts were expected, the extent of the layoffs are more far-reaching than might be expected.

In addition to the usual suspects being hit in a merger -- accounting, HR, sales, marketing -- Sun (NASDAQ: JAVA) is also dismissing many people involved in open source projects, including people who are directly involved with MySQL and would ostensibly be needed for Oracle to keep its many promises to the European Commission...